Tesla is hiring engineers to develop self-driving vehicles

When you’re Elon Musk, co-founding PayPal, founding of SpaceX and creating an empire of electric-powered vehicles under the Tesla banner simply isn’t enough. The aspiring entrepreneur is now looking to hire someone to fill the role of advanced driver assistance systems controls engineer – or in layman’s terms, someone to build a self-driving car.

A job listing for the aforementioned position notes the engineer would be responsible for developing vehicle-level decision-making and lateral and longitudinal control strategies for Tesla’s effort to pioneer fully automated driving. In addition to developing systems for new cars, Tesla may want the engineer to retrofit such a system to current Model S sedans.

Tesla would need to make up a lot of lost ground in the automation sector. As Wired notes, the company is already behind the eight ball as the Model S lacks basic in-vehicle features found on other luxury rides like adaptive cruise control, automated lane changing and self-parking.

Self-driving vehicles in the true sense of the phrase are still at least three to five years away (according to Google, anyway). California, Florida and Nevada all allow auto manufacturers as well as Google to test self-driving vehicles on public roadways so long as a human is in the car. Audi, General Motors, Mercedes-Benz, Nissan and Volvo are all hard at work on self-driving solutions of their own.

Self-driving cars could certainly be a game changer, especially for fleet vehicles and to aid in the transport of the disabled.